Night Prey

"That's what it is," Lucas said. "There's probably six or eight ounces there on the floor."

"Biggest drug bust we've ever had," Beneteau said with satisfaction. He looked at the porch, where Bob Hillerod and Earl sat on a bench, in handcuffs. They'd cut the customer loose; Beneteau was satisfied that he'd been there for cycle parts. "I'm kind of surprised Earl was involved with it."

"It'd be hard to prove that he was," Lucas said. "I didn't see him with the stuff. He says he was back there getting an alternator when everybody started ru

Beneteau looked at the woods and laughed a little. "We got those guys pi

"So let's get Joe," Lucas said.

Beneteau turned the junkyard over to a half-dozen arriving deputies, including his crime-scene specialists. They took the same two sheriff's cars and the panel truck to Hillerod's house.

Joe Hillerod lived ten miles from the junkyard, in a rambling place built of three or four old lake cabins shoved together into one big tar-paper shack. A dozen cords of firewood were dumped in the overgrown back, in a tepee-shaped pile. Three cars were parked in the front.

"I love this backwoods shit," Lucas said to Beneteau as they closed on the house. "In the city, we'd call in the Emergency Response Unit…"

"That's a Mi

"… and we'd stage up, and everybody'd get a job, and we'd put on vests and radios, and we'd sneak down to the area, and clear it," Lucas continued. "Then we'd sneak up to the house and the entry team'd go in… Up here, it's jump in the fuckin' cars, arrive in a cloud of hayseed, and arrest everybody in sight. Fuckin' wonderful."

"The biggest difference is, we arrive in a cloud of hayseed. Down in the Cities, you arrive in a cloud of bullshit," Beneteau said. "You ready?"

They hit Hillerod's house just before noon. A yellow dog with a red collar was sitting on the blacktop in front of the place, and got up and walked off the road into a cattail ditch when he saw the traffic coming.

A young man with a large belly and a Civil War beard sat on the porch steps, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, looking as though he'd just got up. A Harley was parked next to the porch, and a scarred white helmet lay on the grass beside it like a fiberglass Easter egg produced by a condor.

When they slowed, he stood, and when they stopped, he ran in through the door. "That's trouble," Beneteau yelled.

"Go," Co

Lucas said, "Wait, wait," but she kept going, and he was two steps behind her.

Co

In a back room, a naked couple was crawling off a fold-out couch. Co

The fat man was in the bathroom, door locked, working the toilet. Lucas kicked the door in, and the fat man looked at him and went straight out a window, through the glass, onto the roof beyond. He heard cops yelling outside and ran on down the hall, Co

The door at the end of the hall was closed and Lucas kicked it just below the lock, and it exploded inward. Behind it, another couple were crawling around in their underpants, looking for clothes. The man had something in his hand and Lucas yelled, "Police, drop it," and tracked his body with the front sight of the pistol. The man, looking up, dazed with sleep, dropped a gun. The woman sat back on the bed and pulled a bedspread over her breasts.

Beneteau and two deputies came up behind them, pistols drawn. "Got 'em?" He looked past Lucas. "That's Joe."

"What the fuck are you doing, George?" Joe asked.

Beneteau didn't answer. Instead, he looked at the woman and said, "Ellie Rae, does Tom know about this?"

"No," she said, hanging her head.

"Aw, God," Beneteau said, shaking his head. "Let's get everybody downstairs."

A deputy was waiting for them on the stairs. "Did you look in the dining room, Sheriff?"

"No, what'd we get?"

"C'mon, take a look," the deputy said. He led the way back through a small kitchen, then through a side arch to the dining room. Two hundred semiautomatic rifles were stacked against the walls. A hundred and fifty handguns, glistening with WD-40, were slotted into cardboard boxes on the floor.

Lucas whistled. "The gunstore burglaries. Out in the 'burbs around the cities."

"This is good stuff," Beneteau said, squatting to look at the long guns. "This is gun-store stuff all the way." Springfield M-1s, Ruger Mini-14s and Mini-30s, three odd-looking Navy Arms, a bunch of Marlins, a couple of elegant Brownings, an exotic Heckler and Koch

SR9.

Beneteau picked up the H amp;K and looked at it. "This is a fifteen-hundred-dollar gun, I bet," he said, aiming it out the window at a Folger's coffee can in the side yard.

"What's the story on the woman up there?" Co

"Ellie Rae? She and her husband run the best diner in town. Rather, she runs it and he cooks. Great cook, but when he gets depressed, he drinks. If they break up, he'll get steady drunk, and she'll quit, and that'll be the end of the diner."

"Oh," Co

"Hey, that's a big deal," Beneteau said defensively. "There are only two of them, and the other one's a grease pit."

Joe Hillerod looked a lot like his brother, with the same blunt, tough German features. "I got fifteen hundred bucks in my wallet, cash, and I want witnesses to that. I don't want the money going away," he said sullenly.

Ellie Rae said, "I'm a witness."

"You shut up, Ellie Rae," Beneteau said. "What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"

"I love him," she said. "I can't help myself."

A deputy helped the fat man into the room. He was bleeding all over his head, shoulders, and arms from the window, and was dragging one leg.

"Dumb bu

"He was flushing shit upstairs," Lucas said. Dumb bu

"Check that," Beneteau said to one of the deputies.

Co

"What the fuck?" Hillerod said, trying to turn to see what she was doing.

"See?"

Lucas looked. Hillerod had the 666 on the web between his thumb and forefinger. "Yeah."

The woman who'd been on the fold-out couch had been watching Co

Co

Lucas was climbing the stairs, and Co

A long stag-handled folding knife sat in a jumble of junk on the chest of drawers. Co